Story of Bali, Indonesia

The Balinese are not particularly interested in Gambaeh, because they are interested in the present, and can find most of the essentials of Gamboeh In a more attractive form elsewhere, in Legong, Baris, Topeng, and above all Ardja. But for us it has interest if for no other reason than that it mirrors the costumes, language, and gesture of the great courts-of east Java during the fourteenth century, when they were at the height of their splendor and of their influence on Bali; as they are also portrayed in stone on the relief's of east Javanese temples and the sculptured figures of Balinese temples from medieval to modern times.

The attendants of each principal character still bear the names of functionaries in those medieval courts. The court, it is true, is seen through Balinese eyes, and through Balinese stage eyes, which naturally extravagate; but no other dance drama, even Topeng, gives us so actual a picture. And it is not a revival, like our modem-pageants, of personages who -once were alive and have been brought to life again by historical research in surroundings which have utterly forgotten them and among a people to whom every gesture and intonation is strange.

Bali is still medieval in spirit, and if Gamboeh has suffered eclipse it is not because the younger Balinese finds its pomp out of date, but because, as we saw above, they can find all the constituents of Gamboeh in a more amusing form elsewhere, with a strong spice of novelty and clowning thrown in. But a really good Gamboeh has far more than an antiquarian interest. Only it must be full of pride and pomp and the grand court plumage of fierce kings and fairy princes, revolving with great numbers and great sound, if it is to persuade us to unravel its mysterious and noisy ceremonial.

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